Re-Learning to Bike on An Electric Bike | Getting Your Balance Back on an E-Bike

Hi, it's Alana here with SIXTHREEZERO. Today, we are going to talk about how to learn or relearn how to bike on an e-bike. So stick around.

As e-bikes are a little new and getting a little more popular, there are a lot of people that are returning to biking on an e-bike that haven't ridden a bike in a little while. So this video is for anyone who doesn't feel too comfortable on a bike, but has ridden a bike before and just kind of wants a refresher before getting started on their e-bike.

So, the first tip is you're going to want your helmet, of course. Safety first. All right, you've got your helmet on. Now you want to make sure to familiarize yourself with your e-bike and all of its components. So that means understanding the hand breaks. We have a whole video that goes over how to use hand brakes, but just a little preview or summary; the right is the rear, controls the rear brake, the left controls the front brake. And when you're breaking, you want to use both, first engaging the right-hand brake and then the left, but try them out, see how it feels.

You can practice walking with your bike and then engaging the hand breaks. But it's good to know how they work. All right, once you understand how the hand breaks work and you're comfortable with those, you're going to want to understand how your e-bike works, how the motor works, and the three different riding modes.

So this is the Evryjourney internal battery 250 watt e-bike and it has three riding modes. The first is throttle operated, the second mode is pedal assist, meaning that when you pedal the motor kicks in, gives you a boost, and then third, you can keep everything off and just ride it manually. And that's how we're going to start. If you want more information on our e-bikes and all the different components and how they work, we have a video on that for more details. But for now, let's just say you've watched that already.

You understand the riding modes. So now, before even getting onto the bike, you want to get in the right mindset. And when it comes to riding a bike, balance is key. So we're going to start with some balance warm-up exercises. Really simple, can take less than a minute. Really all you want to do is practice balancing on each foot one at a time. So I'm going to start on my left, balancing on my left foot, holding it for about five seconds. If you need to hold onto your bike or hold onto a wall, feel free to do that. Then the other side, just to get a feel for your balance. And if you need to do that a few times, go ahead. But I would say just nailing five seconds on each foot means you're probably ready to go. So your head's in the right place.

You have a feel for your balance on either side. Next, you're going to want to lower your seat. So I'm 5'1. The seat is pretty much all the way down and I forgot to mention, I have the motor completely off so anytime I mount the bike, I start with the motor off and you want to keep it off as well. So right now it's basically a standard bike. Okay, back to the seat. So the seat is pretty low and the reason is that I want to be able to place my feet completely flat on the ground when seated, at least to start. And then once you're more comfortable, you can gradually raise the seat so you have better leg extension. So when mounting the bike, which we have another video on, going to engage the brakes, I usually mount from the left side, this has a pretty low step-through frame so you can just step across. As you can see, I have to get up on my tiptoes to sit down so actually I'm going to lower the seat a little bit more.

So this is about as low as it will go. And let's see how that looks. Yeah, that's a lot better. I feel more stable. I can put my feet almost completely flat on the ground. So from here I have the brakes still engaged, and you're going to want to kick back your kickstand. And now we're ready to start rolling. So like those balance exercises we practiced before, you might want to do the same thing; practice leaning on your left side, leaning on your right side, just to get a feel for it back and forth a few times. And now we're going to start by walking your bike. So I'm going to actually get off the seat standing in front. It might feel a little awkward, but that's okay. You just need to practice this for a few seconds, minutes, but you're basically just going to get a feel for how to maneuver your bike. So you can start by walking slowly, practice going right, practice going left. Do that for a while until you feel comfortable and ready to move on.

All right, now that you have a feel for how to turn, you can grip the brakes and go ahead and sit on the saddle. And now my feet are down and I'm going to practice essentially the same thing but from a seated position. So I'm going to practice walking forward. And this is going to require that one foot is raised at a time. So releasing the brakes, this is how that looks and you're just pushing off and gliding. As you continue, you can practice using more power and gliding for a little longer. So pushing off, gliding, and you're keeping one foot down almost at all times. If you ever feel uncomfortable, just remember that you lowered your seat so you can put both feet down and easily catch your balance if you need that stability or if you need to take a break.

Once you have a feel for gliding with one foot, we're going to move forward to gliding with both feet raised. So here we're going to take two alternating steps and then lift both feet. So an easy way to remember that is you're going to push, push, glide. All right, so let's see how that looks. So push, push, glide, push, push glide. You might have to push three or four times to get enough momentum to lift both feet. Another thing that can help is if you have a slight decline, that'll give you a little more momentum as well so you can lift your feet up for longer.

And of course, the next step is to turn the motor on. And once you have the motor on and you are able to use the throttle, that is really going to help you stay balanced. I actually think it's much easier to ride an e-bike than it is to ride a standard bike because you can always use the throttle to get going. And once you're going, it's really easy to stay balanced. So now hopefully you feel comfortable. You've done a few push, push goes. You've glided for a few seconds with both feet up and you're ready to turn your bike on. So I always suggest keeping the motor off until you're mounted. So here I am. I'm mounted. Ready to go. So I'm going to turn it on.

And when you turn on your bike, it starts off at pedal assist level one, but for this video, we're going to completely ignore the pedals and we're just going to focus on staying balanced on our bike. If you haven't tested out your throttle yet, you may want to step off, turn your motor off, step off, turn it back on and just give the throttle the tiniest tap, just so you can get a feel for what it's like when the motor kicks in. You could also do that while seated if you're not too nervous about it. If you tap it really gently, you won't rush forward. So I'll show you what that looks like, and I'm just going to lift both feet.

So it's not too much power. We're not using the pedals at all. So it's a good way to get comfortable gliding with both feet up. So we're going to do the same thing that we did with the push, push, go, except we're not going to push, push, we're just going to use the throttle. Okay, we're going to gently engage the throttle. I'm pretty small so I'm going to just lightly press it. But if you're a little bigger, you might have to press down a little more to get going. As soon as you feel the push, can just lift your feet, you don't have to lift them too high just an inch yourself off the ground so you're not dragging your feet along. Remember to stop you have your hand breaks, right rear left front, and you can always put your feet down to catch your balance. So let's go. Pushing down on the throttle now and just keeping it slow. If you go faster, it's easier to go straight, but if you're nervous about going fast, then you're going to have to stay a little more balanced, but that's okay.

So I'm at 6.7 miles per hour here, and you can slow down with your rear hand brake and just practice going around, turning right, turning left. And if you feel up for it, you can increase your speed. Now I'm at nine. Slow down again with the right-hand break. And if you're feeling really confident, you can go ahead and place your feet on the pedals. I'm still not pedaling. I'm just using the throttle and this is perfectly fine. You can ride your bike essentially like this. You don't even need to pedal. Once you're comfortable gliding using the throttle with your feet on the pedals, then you can experiment with raising your seat a little more so that you get better leg extension. It might be a little more comfortable, and then you're essentially ready to ride out wherever you want to ride. That's the great thing about e-bikes.

You don't necessarily need to pedal. If you can get the throttle going, you're basically riding your bike. So we will cover how to use the pedals in our next video. But hopefully, this was a good intro to learning how to bike again on an e-bike. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below and feel free to add any other tips you have for new riders.

Also, be sure to check out our SIXTHREEZERO pedalers group. It's a great place to get product recommendations, accessory recommendations, share photos of your rides. It's a fun community. Everyone is really welcoming and helpful and encouraging toward each other. So check it out and be sure to download the SIXTHREEZERO pedaling app if you haven't so you can log all of your rides, you can see how many miles you've biked on your bike. So it's really cool to look at. You can see your riding streaks. It's really motivating if you're trying to build a biking habit or get in shape with your bike. So check it out, SIXTHREEZERO pedaling in the app store or in the Google Play Store. And that about covers it. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.